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The ancient fife and drum community lost more than a fellow fifer, founder, and friend on July 13, 2009. With the passing of Ed Olsen, we lost a living legend whose entire life united the ancients in music and good will. It was Ed who as a child never learned to ride a bike because he was too busy fifing for Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Brooklyn. It was through Ed that we learned about Jack Clapp and the VCA and the Three Rips (all of whom, by the way, had the biggest feet Ed had ever seen). It was Ed who moved to CT in 1953 to be closer to the hub of ancient music, and somehow the true golden years of the Ancients began. He ran a “Committee of 12” (in truth comprised of himself, Cathy, and the late Carl Emmanuelson) who devised and held the very first Ancient Muster in 1953, based on a foundation of “no judging, no prizes, no unkind words.” The art of mustering hasn’t just survived the passing of 50+ years, it has molded the Ancients into a unique community and is what identifies and binds us together in friendship.

At the behest of Ed Olsen, Fred Fennell took time off from the Rochester Philharmonic to attend the Deep River Ancient Muster in 1959.

It was his lifelong collection of fifes, drums, uniforms, accouterments, ephemera, papers and other documents, and images that comprises The Drum Corps Archives located in the Museum of Fife and Drum in Ivoryton, CT. His wit, sense of humor, personal charm, and most of all his dedication attracted a circle of close friends, now mostly gone — Freddie, Ken, Eddie Classey (no one ever really called him Eddie), Roy, Norm Ott (no one ever really called him Norm), Dave Boddie, the inimitable Bill Pace (who was called a lot of things,but no one ever called him Bill) — a long list that includes old timers that were even older than Ed himself–Charlie Miller, John Golet, Pete Mietzner, Ted Kurtze, Acton Ostling, Gus Moeller — a list that goes on and on.

Olsen marching with the Noah Webster Ancients in Manhattan, 1946. He is playing his $4 Cloos fife.

He gave us a lexicon—“jollification,” “muster,” “circle of friendship,” “tattoo,” “F-Troop,” “standpiece,” “sutler”— some of which he slyly slipped into the jargon of the Ancients and others that developed around it. He conjured up images of “old New York,” which to him was nothing more (and nothing less) than the stories of Brooklyn neighborhood drum corps. Thus, we learned of a once-young “Nicky” Attanasio trying to get his drum through the subway turnstile without the benefit of a nickel, the awesome bass drumming of Lexy Sinclair, who was gone too soon; the 1946 “drum corps party” held at Korczak’s home in West Hartford, CT (“we are so ancient, it heurts”), and another held at Alex Smith’s farm in Clinton, memorialized in a photo of the original “Dreaded Drum Line.” We learned about the 1939 World’s Fair Field Day and the ill will created between certain drum corps when it may or may not have been Olsen who made sure an ornery old Creeker heard a rumor about one of the judges. We learned of the escapades of Eddy Breen an d Al Haggarty and the sorry situation of Haggarty’s mother, “who had a bad habit of believing everything I said,” through which we learned of Breen’s “bum foot.” We learned how the only good fife was a Cloos fife and of Ed’s consternation when he had to pay the exorbitant sum of $4 to replace the one he lost. He never lost that one, though! We learned of Jeremiah T. Mahoney, who wondered out loud how his corps had lost a competition based on one-third of a poorly executed rudiment (“And I wan’ ter know,” he said in his best Irish brogue, “whether ‘twas the first t’ird, the second t’ird, or the t’ird t’ird?”) and how Ed and his comrades left that drum corps meeting upon hearing of the bombing of Pearl Harbor to enlist in the armed forces — and through that, the escapades of Geronimo Field Music. Thank God Ed came back—there were others who did not.

Olsen and friends meet in the Drum Corps Archives to discuss the goings-on at the 2004 Jaybird Day.

When I think of Ed I see him sitting in a lawn chair under the tarp of Mo Schoos’s supercamper at the Westbrook Muster, an ice-cold ale in hand and regaling anyone who stopped by with these and other stories of days gone by. . . those of us who loved him best will never forget them, nor will we ever forget him.

Ed, if you can hear me, please! Save me a place right next to you! It’s your job to keep me in line!

Copyright 2016, History of The Ancients Dot Org. All rights reserved.

There was a time when Hartford residents tolerated if not welcomed recruiting parties, judging from this advertisement in the August 18, 1808 issue of the American Mercury.

To some, the Captain Boardman affair seemed innocent enough — he had violated a lawfully enacted noise ordinance. To others, it was a political firestorm, one of many that were fanned into flames by federalist hatred of the War of 1812. In any event, what the Captain Boardman affair did was test the law making it a crime to play fifes and drums in the city of Hartford, a curious law indeed since Connecticut, birthplace of the Ancients, preserves so much of the music familiar to Captain Boardman. It also marked the beginning of the end for Connecticut’s Federalist party.

Elijah Boardman was born in December 1787. His father, also Elijah, was a Revolutionary patriot who, according to his obituary, was permanently injured by the “barbarity of his treatment” aboard the infamous prison-ship Jersey, “from which time he never [again] saw a well day.” After the war, Boardman was hired as keeper of the Hartford jail where, perhaps as a result of his wartime experiences, he “uniformly treated the prisoners committed to his charge with all the tenderness humanity could dictate.” He died, much lamented, in September 1808.

Not so 5 years later, as the hated Second War with Britain began. Note the wear that has occurred on the wood block. American Mercury, March 10, 1813

Just weeks before his death, Boardman’s 21-year-old namesake had been appointed cornet of the 1st U.S. Regiment of Light Dragoons. As such, he assisted his superior officers in the recruiting service; in 1810 he was promoted to first lieutenant and became its commander. He was eventually awarded two more promotions, first as captain and then brevet major. Hartford’s federalist newspapers took no notice of Captain Boardman’s military achievements, but the anti-federalist American Mercury did, complimenting the fine appearance of his recruits as they prepared to leave Hartford for Vermont on October 23, 1814:

Seldom do we recollect to have seen a finer body of men. They have been recruited in this vicinity within the last few months, and are all stout, able bodied, healthy young fellows. The indefatigable exertions bestowed upon them, in their discipline and drill, is highly honorable to the officers assigned to their command, and is abundantly repaid by the rapid proficiency made by the men.

Captain Boardman’s efforts, however, were not well-received by the city’s federalists. They petitioned the legislature then in session, complaining of the disorder occasioned by Captain Boardman’s preparations for the Vermont expedition, especially by “exercising the recruits & marching them daily with martial music through the principal streets” of the city. “The citizens, they claimed, “are not only annoyed, but their property has been pillaged and destroyed, and the most violent outrages have been committed. . .” The legislature responded with an act permitting Hartford (and other cities) to regulate the use of “public squares, streets, and highways” and also to “designat[e] the place or places for military parades and rendezvous” [recruiting], upon which Hartford gratefully and promptly passed an ordinance criminalizing the location of recruiting offices and/or the playing of drums, fifes, or “any martial instrument” anywhere except in the most desolate parts of the city. Meanwhile, Captain Boardman was arrested and jailed for his musical crimes. His outraged “brother officers” complained in a letter to the editors of the city newspapers, but to no avail. They were ignored by all but the Mercury.

Perhaps in deference to his military commitments, Captain Boardman’s trial did not occur until December 1816. Now that the war was over and tempers had cooled, he was no longer accused of the criminal use of fifes and drums; instead, the court considered whether he had illegally “exceeded the limits of his duty:

It was not questioned, on the side of the prosecution, but that he had a right to carry on the recruiting, and for this purpose to make use of martial music in a proper manner; but it was claimed that this power had its reasonable limits, and that Capt. Boardman had exceeded these limits to the great annoyance of the public.

And the public had indeed been greatly annoyed — maybe not the entire public but certainly those of the federalist persuasion. In addition to “parading the streets, with [common] drums and fifes, on an average, as much as three or four hours in a day” the defendant had employed the use of not only “one bass drum” but “sometimes two”! This had so discomfited federalist ears that their owners easily convinced the court that such noise was also “distressing to the sick, interrupting business, frightening horses, and overturning and breaking carriages.” The federalist Connecticut Courant, whose report was reprinted by newspapers within and beyond Connecticut, claimed that Captain Boardman was found guilty by an “impartial court and jury” and was thereby ordered to pay a $50 fine plus $67.10 in costs. The anti-federalist Mercury, whose reports were similarly circulated, claimed that the only laws violated were Connecticut’s notorious “blue laws” and protested the “nearly three hundred dollars” that Capt. Boardman was obliged to pay in consequence of his faithful attention to his military duties.

After the trial, recruiting was once again carried on without incident. American Mercury, July 6, 1818.

Things had worsened for Connecticut’s Federalists even before the trial. The Hartford Convention had failed when the war ended in 1815, before it could produce its list of demands to the U.S. government. The demise of the Federalist party soon followed. Meanwhile, Elijah Boardman had returned to his business of annoying the federalists, something he had been doing annually since 1810 by running for public office, first as a democrat and now as a member of the Toleration Party. While he consistently lost each election, he came close twice, forcing a gubernatorial rematch in 1814 and again in 1815.

The Toleration Party, founded in 1816, won its first victory the following year with the election of Oliver Wolcott, Jr. as governor of the state. American Mercury.

After the trial he continued his military career in Hartford but only for a little while. It is not known precisely when he left Connecticut, but by 1825 Boardman was in Youngstown, New York, serving as commander of Fort Niagara and as keeper of its lighthouse. He left Niagara in 1827, heading for Wisconsin and the Winnebago War. In the summer of 1828, while stationed at Fort Howard, Boardman was again the center of controversy when he was court-martialed for censuring a superior officer. In a trial that must have revived memories of Hartford, he was found guilty, but this time the verdict was overturned — by none other than President John Quincy Adams, who found cause for Boardman’s conduct (the intoxicated officer in question had stolen a keg of pickled oysters). Thus the last of New England’s Federalists restored to one of its enemies both his good name and his military career.

Shortly thereafter Elijah Boardman returned to New York, presumably at or near Fort Niagara, where he died at the age of 44 on March 22, 1832 following an eight-day illness. He is buried in a nearby Fort Niagara cemetery.

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Copyright History of the Ancients Dot Com, all rights reserved. May 2015.

The seller gives an interesting provenance for this fife, which might convince some of its “Civil War” heritage. He identifies it as “bought from Bannermans island. . . back in the 1950’s.” Francis Bannerman (b. 1820, d. 1872) ran a ship chandlery near the Brooklyn Navy Yard, but shortly after the close of the Civil War, he expanded his product to include military salvage. However, it was his son, also named Francis (b. 1851, d. 1918) who built Bannerman’s into a multigenerational enterprise dealing in government military surplus and supplies — some of which were indeed from the Civil War but much of which were not. So, yes, we can believe the seller’s claim that this fife was sold by Francis Bannerman (or, in 1950, by one of his sons), but that does not guarantee its “Civil War” origin.

• • •

The seller’s claim of a mouthpiece made from “Goodyear rubber” is harder to accept. Charles Goodyear, who developed and patented the vulcanization method that produced “hard rubber,” died in 1860. The term “Goodyear rubber” was never in general use, the generic term being simply “hard rubber,” which was the term utilized by the Cloos company when describing these fifes in their catalogs.

• • •

The most imposing and, therefore, convincing “evidence” of this fife originating during the Civil War is the engraving featured on its midsection, “US / 1864.” Unfortunately, it is a bogus mark that did not originate with this fife.

• • •

I don’t believe for a minute that the seller deceptively marked this fife. But someone did! We can’t fault the seller for believing what he is seeing, nor can we fault him for telling others about, but we can educate him as well as other buyers and sellers as to the spurious nature of this and similar marks found on other instruments (see Buying Old Fifes: When You Don’t Get What You Pay For, November 11, 2014, on this blog). This kind of fakery has been going on since the Bicentennial years, although this is the first time I have seen it on a metal fife. Much more common are impressments found on wood fifes. But wood fifes are becoming quite expensive and harder to find; perhaps this explains the increasing number of forged dates we find on wood flutes and even flageolets — and now on metal fifes.

• • •

It is important to note that this kind of fife is only now coming into its own as an “antique.” These lip-plated metal fifes are now reaching the age of 70 and 80 years, which means they are no longer just “old.” They are acquiring a certain mystique, something that even Grandma and Grandpa don’t remember much of. They are part of the “new antiques,” colloquially called “mid-century modern,” which probably accounts for their being rescued from attics and closets and offered for sale on ebay and other sites — which in turn attracts forgers as well as innocent buyers.

Comrade Rowley’s story actually begins with someone else’s, that of Josephus White Benadom. Benadom, known as “Seph” to family and friends, was 19 years old when he enlisted in the Iowa 31st Infantry, Company E as a fifer. The 31st was a volunteer regiment raised in and around Davenport, Iowa and participated in several major engagements, including (among others) Vicksburg, Lookout Mountain, and Missionary Ridge as well as the Battle of Atlanta and Sherman’s March. It was mustered out shortly after the war was over, on June 27, 1865.

Benadom’s Civil War experiences entitled him to membership in the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization founded in 1866 and comprised of Civil War veterans who had worn the Union blue. Benadom, who at this time resided in Maquoketa, Iowa, joined the Ben Paul Post in nearby Wyoming [IA]. The post had been established February 15, 1883. However, Benadom’s name is not among its charter members or even its early members; in fact, his name does not appear in the rosters until 1915. There he would have remained, unnoticed and unknown among the nameless faces peering at us from old photographs, had it not been for Comrade Rowley, who had never served a day in the war but whose Post “membership” nonetheless earned him and his companion instant fame.

Rowley was an unlikely candidate for G.A.R. membership. He was a young robin with a broken wing that Seph Benadom discovered in 1926. Benadom, who by that time had been practicing medicine for decades, set the wing, named the bird Rowley, and kept him as a lifelong companion. Thereafter, bird and savior were connected by mutual affection as well as a string affixed to both Rowley’s leg and a convenient button on Dr. Benadom’s coat. Legend has it that Rowley was fairly content despite being so confined, making only a few feeble attempts at escape. He thrived on a meat-and-fruit diet and accompanied Dr. Benadom wherever he pleased, including the 1926 G.A.R. encampment held in Des Moines, Iowa, where an alert news photographer captured and preserved for posterity a glimpse of Rowley the robin sitting atop his homemade perch stuck into the cork end of Dr. Benadom’s fife. This photograph catapulted Comrade Rowley (and Comrade Benadom) onto the front pages of many a midwestern newspaper and even one as far away as Canandaigua, New York.

If Rowley and Dr. Benadom were to be friends, though, the bird had no choice but to tolerate if not enjoy fife music. The doctor treasured the fife he had made in 1862 from “fine boxwood and brass” and played the old military tunes upon it on many occasions throughout his life. It was, he said, “the best instrument in the whole G.A.R.” It had seen much wartime use, even when the young Benadom and his regiment “marched with Sherman to the sea.” Undoubtedly, it was the same instrument he used at the Great Jones County [Iowa] Fair in 1927, during a truly unforgettable musical performance that also featured Rowley the Robin:

Dr. J. W. Benadom’s Fife and Drum Corp[s], assisted by his sons, and Charles Clark of Maquoketa and Frank Byerly of Anamosa, appeared that year and are still recalled by many. Benadom had trained a Robin, caught the previous spring, to sit quietly on his fife as he played. The two were a familiar sight on Monticello streets for several years.

Rowley The Second enjoys the 67th Annual Encampment of the GAR. Unidentified newspaper clipping, Author’s Collection.

Rowley lived the good life from 1926 until his demise sometime before or during 1933, since that year Dr. Benadom attended the 67th G.A.R. National Encampment in St. Paul with an eight-week-old successor, another robin named Rowley the Second. Apparently Rowley the Second had inherited the amiable characteristics of the original Rowley, among which were stoicism and a fondness for fife music. Benadom explained to a reporter how he had whittled Rowley’s perch himself. Still, he had worried about bringing him to encampments, “I was kind of afraid he’d get scared of all the noise — these drums and bugles,” but there was no need to fret. Rowley the Second behaved as courteously as did his predecessor. Benadom claimed that Rowley the Second was so talented that he could “chirp a few bars” of his favorite tune, “The Girl I Left Behind.”

Both Rowleys proved perfect companions for the old doctor. For 7 years, first the one robin and then the other had posed contentedly on his perch as the duo’s fame spread in newspaper stories published from within and beyond Iowa. But all good things must come to an end, which they did in 1933, only weeks after Benadom and Rowley the Second had returned from the St. Paul G.A.R. encampment. That’s when Dr. Benadom was murdered:

He was known to take walks in the park in the afternoon near his home at 639 N. Sycamore St, in Monticello, IA. It was on one of these walks that he reported to have been robbed by two thugs in the vicinity of the amphitheater ticket office. The men alleged to have taken $30 to $40. These circumstances of his confrontation frightened him and caused a sinking spell. He laid down on the couch in his reception room and became unconscious and continued so until his death an hour later.

This wasn’t the first time Dr. Benadom was mugged. In September 1902, he had been “waylaid, beaten, and robbed of $42, while walking near his home in Maquoketa. But he was a young, strong 59 years old then, and in 1933 he was 90 and unable to recover from the heart attack induced by the shock of his encounter with two burly thugs. Dr. Benadom was buried on December 9, 1933 in the Mt. Joy Cemetery near Davenport. What became of Rowley the Second is at this point unknown.

On the Fife-O-Meter, this fife ranks an 8 out of 10, as far as Cloos fifes go. It appears to be flawless with no cracks, open grain, dents, or gouges. The ferrules are lovely — maybe a bit too lovely for an old fife, so I am taking a point away for the injudicious use of silver cleaner. The other point is lost because, at 15-1/2 inches total length, it likely plays in C and not the more desirous B-flat.

All photos courtesy of pahaskabooks.

All in all, a pretty nice fife.

On the Fake-O-Meter though, I give it a -10. It loses 5 points merely because it is a Cloos

and therefore couldn’t possibly have a Civil War provenance, despite what the seller says:

Civil-War-FIFE-Identified-8th-VERMONT-INFANTRY

As readers of this blog already know, the machinery to make this kind of ferrule wasn’t available until after the war was over, which is precisely when Cloos bought one and set his sons to work spinning tapered ferrules. The other 5 points are deducted because of the tone-hole pattern which, according to all available evidence, was not designed until the Clooses had examined some fifes of Crosby’s make, and that didn’t occur until 1873 — at the earliest.

However, this fife has a unique feature that strains the Fake-O-Meter to almost the breaking point. It is the inscription, “8th Vermont Infantry.”

There are at least two people on this earth (me and a colleague in Maryland) who know that this mark (and others like them) is fake, but the fact that it appears on an obviously post-war fife should be enough to give a serious heads-up to the rest of the fife-collecting world. But because the seller believes it is a rare feature that confirms the impossible, causing him-or-her to raise the price to an outrageous sum, the fife loses 10 more points and actually falls below the range of the Fake-O-Meter.

Buy this fife if you like it. Buy it if you can afford it. Buy it if you want a C-pitched Cloos to round out your collection. Or buy it because it has shiny ferrules. But don’t buy it because it is a Genuine Civil War Cloos fife, because it isn’t.

Although contemporary first-person accounts are preferred over memoirs when it comes to accuracy, detail, and reliability, Ten Years in the Ranks U.S. Army and Drum Taps in Dixie are two candidates for the exception to this rule. The authors, Augustus Meyers and Delavan Miller respectively, penned their memoirs early in the twentieth century, when leaders of the Grand Army of the Republic thought it wise to preserve memories of the Civil War by encouraging veterans to publish them. Miller, himself a G.A.R. official who had served in the New York Second Heavy Artillery, was 55 when he authored Drum Taps in 1904. He also wrote A Drum’s Story and Other Tales (1909), a lesser-known series of anecdotes that, while interesting, lack the charm of his earlier work. Meyers’ Civil War experiences were predated by several years of service on the western frontier, but the most fascinating part of the story he told in Ten Years (1914) is of his antebellum training at the army’s music school on Governor’s Island. He wrote about this at age 72, some 60 years after the fact, but did so with amazing clarity nonetheless.

The appeal of both Ten Years and Drum Taps arises from the candid recounting of what it was like for a couple of boys from New York to train for and serve in the Yankee army — not so much as fighting men but as musicians. Because of their youth (they were just over 12 years old), both Meyers and Miller ended up in the field music. Since fifers and drummers seldom saw actual field service (they had “nothing to shoot back with,” Drum Taps p. 83), musicians were seldom on the field, although there was the occasional “fight in which it was all “front” and no chance for the musicians to get to the rear”(Drum Taps, p. 142). In any event, immediately upon enlisting Meyers was directed to the music school:

We reported to Sergeant Hanke, who was in charge of all the non-commissioned offices and music boys in that battery. . .Sergeant Hanke, after looking me over, asked whether I desired to be a drummer or a fifer. When I expressed a preference for the former, he made some remarks about my slim and very youthful appearance and advised me to think it over for a day or two (Ten Years, p. 1).

This proved to be sage advice:

I watched the boys practicing and noted how difficult it seemed to be for some to hold the drum-sticks properly and beat the first exercise, called “Mammy-Daddy,” without hitting the rim of the drum as often as the drum-head, which would bring down upon them a reprimand from the instructor or in some cases a rap across the knuckles of some persistently awkward boy. When I took note of the exceeding large and heavy drums used in the service at that time, which the drummers were obliged to carry, I resolved to become a fifer. . . (Ten Years, p. 6).

The training Meyers received utilized both note reading (he reports struggling to “understand the meaning of the notes in my music book”) as well as rote learning. He found that Sergeant Henke

had a habit of taking a boy’s fife out of his hands and playing part of the piece for him to show him how it should be done. As he was an inveterate tobacco-chewer this was very disagreeable. Wiping the fife on the sleeve of the jacket did not remove the strong odor. In my case I used soap and water as soon as I had the opportunity to do so (Ten Years, p. 11).

Otherwise, Meyers remembered his instructor fondly, “He often listened painstakingly to our complaints and forgave us for many minor transgressions,” such as when he noticed “a pipe stem protruding between the buttons of [Meyers’s] jacket” (Ten Years, pp. 11, 14). He had no such memories, unfortunately, of Michael “Daddy” Moore, the drum instructor:

I once threw a basin full of dirty water out of a window and inadvertently dashed it over Sergeant Moore, who was passing. He saw me and immediately got his rattan and gave me a good whipping (Ten Years, p. 14).

Miller, too, was destined for the field music. His enlistment in New York’s Second Heavy occurred at a pivotal time:

. . .only one company [had] got their guns and horses when it was decided that no more light batteries were wanted. So the balance of the regiment was turned into heavy artillery (heavy infantry). This change called for fifers and drummers. . . (Drum Taps, p. 19).

Illustration of the drum corps of NY 2nd Heavy, from Drum Taps in Dixie (Author’s Collection)

Miller “was the first drummer the regiment had” and recalled with pride how his drum was “a present from the officers at Forth Worth” (Drum Taps, p. 19).

Evidently Miller was already a proficient drummer, since his first assignment, participating in dress parade, occurred the day after he received his instrument. Not so for Meyers, however. His first dress parade was still weeks away while he toiled with the other “music boys” at the Island in learning the basics:

I was handed a “B” fife, the kind that was used at that time, and was shown how to hold it and place my fingers over the holes and my lips over the embouchure. I found it difficult to make a sound at first, but after a time I managed to produce some noise. I struggled with the gamut for a week or more and spent another in trying to play a bar or two of music correctly. After that I got along faster and commenced to learn some of the more simple calls and to understand the meaning of the notes in my music book. . .after about two months I had made sufficient progress to take my part in playing the reveille, retreat and tattoo. After that, I learned to play marches and other pieces (Ten Years, p. 11).

Both authors recounted the particulars of their military service, which extended beyond learning and playing music. Meyers’s 10-year career began in 1854 with his assignment to Carlisle Barracks. This was followed by several stints at various forts on the western frontier before the outbreak of the Civil War forced his unit’s return to the east. They were attached to the Army of the Potomac, where Meyers set aside his fife to serve in the commissary department. He described either witnessing or participating in a number of battles including the bloody Seven Days of the Peninsula Campaign. One instance in particular “made such an impression. . .that I had no difficulty in recognizing it many years afterward when I revisited the scene.” We can almost feel his terror as he recalled that day.

I noticed a great cloud of dust which seemed to be approaching, and when it neared the gap I could make out that there were horses, but was not sure whether it was cavalry or artillery. . . My doubts about this were dispelled in a few minutes when I saw a sudden puff of smoke and heard the familiar sound of a shell passing over our heads. We heard the command to lie down and obeyed it promptly. . . Each time I heard the scream of a shell coming our way, I hugged the ground so close that I broke the crystal and hands of an open-faced watch which I carried in my pocket. . . (Ten Years, pp. 228-229).

Miller’s record with the Second Heavy is less clear as he wrote in a more random, spontaneous fashion. His story is admittedly anecdotal (“[m]emory awakened furnished material. . .each article recalling faces, forms, scenes and incidents from out of the misty past” Drum Taps, p. vi). He remained a musician throughout his service with Grant’s army at Fredericksburg (1862), Cold Harbor (1864), and during the Petersburg siege (1864-65). The carnage of war so clearly described by Meyers is sometimes lost, since Miller recalled soldiering as a secondary duty. He was, first and foremost, a musician.

. . .my precious drum was put out of action by a piece of a rebel shell at Bull Run and was among the trophies gathered up by the Confederates in the stampede that followed. Its loss I regretted exceedingly, for its equal in tone and other good qualities I never tapped the sticks to again. It was a beauty, too, and was my first drum (Drum Taps, p. 20).

Card found in Author’s copy of A Drum’s Tale and Other Stories (1909).

These memoirs are important for several reasons. The historian can rely upon them because so much of what the authors remembered is confirmed by genealogy, military records, and published chronologies. Additionally, both the academic and amateur scholar of historic military studies, especially those interested in field music, will find an accounting of just how the fifes, drums, and those who played them related to the overall function of the mid-nineteenth century army, proving how closely the dictates of the period military manuals were followed — or not. Using standard music bibliographies, they can prove that tunes cited by Miller, such as “Yankee Doodle,” “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” “Rory O’More,” and “The Campbells Are Coming,” remain part and parcel of the Ancient core repertory. It is perhaps these latter interests that resulted in both Drum Taps and Ten Years being reissued by modern presses long after they had been out of print.

What this writer found most important, though, is their empiricism. The authors clearly define an additional, emotional connection to the music. This is not something that can be easily detected, much less verified, in other historical sources, and it takes a close reading of both Drum Taps and Ten Years to discover it as an underlying theme. It is more obvious perhaps in Miller’s work — it is, in this writer’s opinion, what makes Drum Taps so charismatic. Both Miller and Meyers internalized the music they played, making it a part of their own personal identity. Because other fifers and drummers did the same, the field music was more than a functional military necessity; it was also a social community, binding its members together with an affinity for the music that rose above its physical nature and thereby enabled its survival long after it had been deemed old-fashioned by others. A like assimilation occurs with Ancient fifers and drummers; maybe that is why so many remain in the community lifelong. It also accounts for why the core repertory, although old, is never stale. It is a bit surprising to discover, via Meyers and Miller, that this identity was not created by the Ancients but was inherited by them.

This phenomenon might be partly explained by the power that music attains from its emotional baggage. Briefly, “emotional baggage” is what the late music historian Arthur Schrader identified as “a nonmusical factor in our perception of songs or melodies that consciously or unconsciously affects our thinking and rhetoric about them.”[2] Certainly Miller recognized the intensely patriotic baggage carried by the old military music when he declared, “there is nothing like martial music of the good old-fashioned kind, such as inspired the continental heroes at Lexington, Yorktown and Bunker Hill, and rallied the boys of ’61, and later led them in all the marches through the South” (Drum Taps, p. 23). Emotional baggage is what makes parade-goers “go wild” whenever the Ancients play “Yankee Doodle” while marching up Monument Street in Boston toward the Bunker Hill Memorial on the Fourth of July, much as the old veterans did when they heard it played by a continental-styled drum corps at the 1892 G.A.R. convention (Drum Taps, p. 24)

Emotional baggage notwithstanding, there are other ways that Ancients “feel” the music just as Miller and Meyers did. Much of this is an unconscious process that is seldom articulated, only sensed. However, it is the reason Ancients plan weddings and vacations so as not to interfere with muster season. It explains the communal satisfaction of playing music together, which allows for friendships to develop while new players improve their skills and more experienced players indulge in theirs. It also explains the muster etiquette that demands, as a mark of respect, no spontaneous playing while others are “on stand” and mandates enthusiastic applause for both the experienced player and the newbie, simply because both are fellow Ancients who deserve accolades for doing what they can to perpetuate the craft. It is why Ancients preface their signatures with the phrase, “In the Ancient Spirit.”

“My drummer was a tall, haggard man with a sallow face. I was still a few inches short of attaining five feet, and when my tall drummer and I marched at the head of the company we were called the “long and the short of it,” which greatly annoyed me. . . (Ten Years, p. 38). Apparently the old joke stuck around for many years, judging from this whimsical postcard dated 1905. Author’s Collection.

Meyers demonstrates this kind of feeling but with subtle understatement. He laments that his first companion was not “a drummer-boy of about my own age, with whom I could chum” (Ten Years, p. 38). Worse, he could hardly hope to enjoy sharing music with him since “he was not a very good drummer, and would not take the trouble to learn any new and fancy pieces” (ibid.). Like the Ancient who suspends his-or-her own musical interests in favor of playing pieces that all can enjoy, Meyers’ drumming companion forced him to “content myself with the old repertoire” (Ten Years, p. 39). Later, while serving on the frontier, Meyers found other ways to share music with others of like abilities, such as when he

. . . bought a flute from a member of the band, and took lessons from him. As I understood something about music and played on the fife, I made rapid progress on the flute and had become a fair player when Lieutenant Curtis asked me to come to his lonely cabin and play duets with him. He was an excellent player, and had a lot of music books. . .[and oftentimes] we played music until tattoo. . . (Ten Years, pp. 101-102).

The East Hampton Ancients, [ca. 1922?] Author’s Collection.

Meyers also encountered what would become an Ancient custom — but in reverse. He relished how, as a fifer, he called the musical shots, since “the fifer was considered to [out]rank the drummer and in the absence of special instructions could order the drummer to play such tunes or marches as he chose” (Ten Years, p. 38). This would change in Ancient practice, as tune control was, in the absence of the drum major, relegated to the drummer, who now was considered to outrank the fifer. So it was that the fifers remained silent while old Ed Palmer, drummer and then drum major of Connecticut’s East Hampton Ancients called the tunes, something he was overheard to do at a field day in 1946 in his inimical, “swamp Yankee” way:

Drummahs play Golden Slippahs, Fifahs play whut ye hev a mind to.[3]

Miller was much more ebullient than Meyers in his recollections, perhaps feeling the musical emotional connection more keenly. His fondness for the old-fashioned military drum corps of his youth jaded his later view of anything contemporary:

Martial music seems to have gone out of fashion in these up-to-date days, and what little there is, is but a poor apology, with the bugle blasts interjected between the rub-a-dub-dubs of the drummers who hardly know their a b c’s about snare drumming (Drum Taps, p. 23).

Perhaps what was missing was as much psychological as it was musical:

[R]ight here it may be proper to say that an old army drum corps in the sixties could make music. A boy would not “pass muster” in those days unless he could do the double and single drag with variations, execute the “long roll,” imitate the rattle of musketry, besides various other accomplishments with the sticks. And when a dozen or more of the lads, with their caps set saucily on the sides of their heads, led a regiment in a review with their get-out-of-the-way-Old-Dan-Tuckerish style of music, it made the men in the ranks step off as though they were bound for Donnybrook fair or some other pleasure excursion (Drum Taps, p. 19).

Miller, too, experienced a musical custom that was destined for the Ancient community:

The first two years of the war we were brigaded with a certain Massachusetts regiment…Their drum corps was a good one, too, but of course the boys of the Second New York thought they were a little better than the Bay State fellows, consequently quite a little rivalry existed between the organizations, and when the regiments were out for a review or brigade drill the stalwart drummers from down East would always try to drown out the lads of the Second Heavy (Drum Taps, p. 26).

What the Massachusetts men were doing became, in Ancient parlance, “bearing on.” The purpose of bearing on was to play with enough vigor and volume to confuse the target corps until their music became disorganized, forcing them to stop. Bearing on continued in Ancient practice until at least 1885, when one newspaper reported an incident that occurred between the Moodus Drum and Fife Corps and the Portland Regimental Band, both of whom had attended a G.A.R. event in Maine. “The keen rivalry [that] existed between each organization” resulted in a contest from which only a skilled and enthusiastic Ancient drummer could emerge triumphant:

It was considered great sport to attempt to drown out all other opposition bands or drum corps. The Moodus Corps were overwhelmingly victorious upon this occasion. It appears that the Portland Regimental Band was playing before General Headquarters as the Moodus Corps arrived and marched alongside of them. With their big powerful instruments the Moodus Corps were so dominant that the Portland Band was unable to hear themselves play.[4]

The losers did not take their “derision and defeat” lightly. They protested with “one blast with their horns in the ears of the Moodus players” before breaking ranks.[5]

The Moodus Drum and Fife Corps continue to carry the “big powerful instruments” that they did in both 1885 and 1935, when the incident was reported. Nearly all of these, which date between 1818 and 1846, were produced by the Brown family of Bloomfield, Connecticut. They are “square” drums; that is, their width equals or nearly equals their length, and are perfect for performing in the thunderous, slow-tempoed manner that was once common throughout New England but is now uniquely preserved by Moodus drummers. Miller referred to this style as “chunks of pudding and pieces of pie” but attributed it to age, not region:

[The Massachusetts regimental drum corps] were all full grown men while our drum corps was made up of boys all under eighteen years of age. Their music was always of the “When the Springtime Comes, Gentle Annie,” and “Chunks of Pudding and Pieces of Pie,” style, played in 6/8 time, just suited to the stalwart men in their ranks; while ours was more of the “Rory OMore,” “Garry Owen,” and “Get-out-of-the-way-Old-Dan-Tucker” sort, which we played 2-4 time, better adapted to the quick-stepping New Yorkers behind us (Drum Taps, p. 26).

The apolitical nature of drum corps is taken for granted today, but that has not always been the case. Consider such corps as the Socialist Drum Corps of Syracuse (another was located in Newark) and the New Departure corps of Bristol [CT]. Other corps had a distinct political identity even without a suggestive name, such as the GAR fife and drum corps. Their music assisted their parent organization, which was formed originally as a Grant club, as they lobbied for a variety of veterans’ causes.

Another Grant club, the Boys in Blue, preceeded the GAR.

Perhaps the most benign of the politically oriented drum corps were the Father Mathew TAB corps. “Father Mathew” was an Irish priest (Theobold Mathew, b. October 10, 1790, d. December 8, 1856) who advocated total abstinence from strong drink.

Abstinence, according to Father Mathew, was a matter of will, and he urged his followers to take “The Pledge,” which promised a lifetime of freedom from the evils of alcohol. Ireland experienced the power of Father Mathew’s teachings when crime rates dropped and breweries and distilleries closed as more and more “total abstinence societies” were established.

In 1849 Father Mathew brought his message to the United States, resulting in the growth of temperance societies nationwide and the eventual founding of the Knights of Father Mathew. In 1895, the Knights had become affiliated with the Catholic Total Abstinence Union, and the old total abstinence societies were now temperance and benevolence societies. As their name implies, the TABs performed many charitable works, but in Connecticut some TABs also sponsored drum corps, a wholesome activity for the abstinent juvenile.

At least 15 TAB corps were organized between 1886 and 1938 in 13 Connecticut towns. They all participated at one time or another in the contests sponsored by the Connecticut Fifers and Drummers Association (founded 1885), in either the modern class or the fife, drum, and bugle class. None of the TABs were known to play Ancient style, and none competed as Ancients. Notable among them were St. Paul’s of Kensington, the Father Mathew corps of Hartford, and the Young Men’s Temperance and Benevolence Corps of New Britain.

St. Paul’s was organized in 1909. The corps was a frequent winner in CF&D contests. Two offshoot corps, the St. Paul’s Juniors and the St. Paul’s Freshmen, were established in 1957 and 1959 respectively, and in 1956 St. Paul’s took the unusual step of admitting women to its senior corps. The corps was still competing in 1960. Its last member passed away in 2010 at the age of 93.

Taught by Jimmy Ryan, the “ace fifer” in the Father Mathew Cadets of Hartford. OLS later competed against the FMC in the local contest circuit.

Hartford’s Father Mathew Cadets won their first trophy in 1887, heralding 50-plus years of award-winning performances. In 1928 Jimmy Ryan, “an ace fifer” with Father Mathew, was recruited to teach the fledgling Our Lady of Sorrows, whose cadets earned a fair number of trophies beginning in 1931.

Little is known about the Young Men’s Temperance and Benevolence Drum Corps of New Britain. They maintained a stellar record of performances in CF&DA contests, spanning a 36-year period beginning in 1901 and continued beyond that date as a contributing member of the CF&DA.